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Paper short abstract:

Taking works of Sagisawa Megumu, Kaneshiro Kazuki, and Kim Masumi as case studies, this paper discusses how Korean Japanese literature transcends national borders by conceptualizing the Korean Japanese minority as closely interwoven with global history, the postcolonial world, and its diasporas.

Paper long abstract:

For a long time, the Korean Japanese minority in Japan was widely unknown in Europe, the US, and other parts of the world. In 2017, the global success of the novel Pachinko, published in English by the Korean American author Min Jin Lee, introduced a broader international readership to the Korean Japanese minority and its origins.

In Japan exists a rich corpus of Korean Japanese literature, written by formerly colonialized Koreans living in Japan and their descendants. This corpus can be read as one postcolonial literature amongst others, and some works are accessible in English translation. Despite attaining only small international attention so far, numerous works of Korean Japanese literature deal with questions regarding the role of the Korean Japanese minority in a postcolonial world and its diasporas: How did world history shape the situation of the Korean Japanese minority? In which sense is the existence of the Korean Japanese minority not only a Japanese but a global phenomenon? And does taking into account other postcolonial diasporas contribute to rewrite the history of the Korean Japanese minority?

This paper focusses on these questions by analyzing three Korean-Japanese texts, written in the Heisei-period. Sagisawa Megumu’s novel Saihate no futari (“Two persons at the margins”, 1999) describes the relationship between a Japanese woman and a Korean Japanese man who dies of leukemia. The women’s father is an American GI, who left Japan with the end of the Vietnam War. The man’s mother is a hibakusha. Therefore, the novel presents individual fates as deeply interwoven with global history. The novel GO (“Go”, 2000) by Kaneshiro Kazuki reflects, on the one hand, the division of Korea as a legacy of imperialism. On the other hand, it draws parallels between African Americans in the US, the Civil Rights Movement, and the Korean Japanese minority. Kim Masumi’s novel Nason no sora (“The Sky of Nason”, 2001) is set in Los Angeles, where a Korean Japanese couple lives temporarily. Hence, comparisons between the Japanese community in the US, the Korean community in the US, and the Korean Japanese minority in Japan are frequently made.